AI avatars could be the next generation’s favorite entertainers

AI avatars-Last year, Netflix reportedly published a whopping 1,500 hours of original content. And with the launch of streaming services from Apple and Disney, the on-demand video market is getting very competitive. Media houses and companies are already looking towards the next solution for producing content to keep up with the trend: AI avatars.

Last year in November, Chinese state-run media company Xinhua debuted an AI anchor that looked exactly like its real-life counterpart Zhang Zhao. The company said that the avatar speaks both in Mandarin and English. Xinhua said at that time that AI anchors are now officially a part of their team; aiming to provide “authoritative, timely and accurate news” round the clock, through its apps and social channels like WeChat.

A report from Tencent news published in February stated that the first batch of AI Anchors has produced more than 3,400 news reports, with a cumulative time of more than 10,000 minutes. It even debuted a female AI anchor named Xin Xiaomeng in February. These numbers indicate that at this rate, AI anchors can outwork their human counterparts very soon.

The news agency is already working with the Chinese search giant Soguo on a new male AI anchor named Xin Xiaohao, who’ll be able to gesture, stand, and move more naturally than the current versions.

In the future, news websites – which don’t produce videos with anchors – can use these models to produce a report from their articles, and compete for eyeballs with traditional TV outlets.

This January, Chinese television network CCTV produced its Network Spring Festival Gala, watched by nearly 1.4 billion people. It was the first time hosts of the program – Beining Sa, Xun Zhu, Bo Gao, Yang Long – were accompanied by their AI-generated avatars. CCTV worked with ObEN, an US-based AI company, to create these avatars for the hosts.